The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
NHS waiting lists are causing 14,000 deaths per year and England’s A&E departments are in an “awful state”, a government-commissioned review has found. The 142-page report by Lord Darzi, a cancer surgeon and health minister under Gordon Brown, blamed a lack of capital investment for “crumbling” and “decrepit” buildings, in some cases “infested with vermin” – but said the service’s parlous state was being exacerbated by a general decline in health. Improvements in cancer survival rates “slowed substantially during the 2010s” and the UK now has higher cancer mortality than other comparable countries. The waiting lists are also having an economic impact: 2.8 million people are economically inactive because of long-term sickness.
Keir Starmer used the findings to set out his argument that the NHS must “reform or die”, delivering a speech similar in tone to that of chancellor Rachel Reeves when she announced a £22 billion black hole in the public finances last month.
Starmer said: “Until this morning, we didn't know the full scale of the damage, which is laid bare in the report. Even Lord Darzi, with all his years of experience, is shocked by what he discovered. It is unforgivable and people have every right to be angry.”
Labour entered government planning NHS reforms that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said would hinge on three priorities: shifting from hospital to community care, changing from analogue to digital administration and moving from treating sickness to preventing it.
But it’s one thing to diagnose the problem, even if a solution is forthcoming. Delivery is the real test. And as winter approaches Labour is hoping once again that voters will accept things getting worse before they get better.
